lørdag den 13. oktober 2012

Restoration shaman in Mist of Pandaria.

Restoration shaman in Mist of Pandaria.

I think we are far enough into the expansion to take
a look at how the restoration shaman performs and competes against other
classes.

From Beta to Live there has been a tremendous
improvement, and I do think our whine on the forums have helped since it
appears that quite a few of the points that we made have been noticed, which is
very good.

In this expansion we got a throughput CD which we
have been waiting for, and it is amazing Ascendance is a very, very powerful CD
when used properly. Our talents is more or less okay, and there is room for some
personal preferences e.g. Astral Shift vs. Stone Bulwark Totem. Furthermore, we
also got the option to take another CD Healing Tide Totem, or well I say option
but in reality it is mandatory since it is so good.

So that is two new CDs, and if you feel that you
wants more CDs you can put your last talent in Primal Elementalist and bam you
got two more.

So we went from 0 CDs to 4 that is quite a leap, but
I think it is awesome and Primal Elementalist is gold during intensive healing
phases with massive raid dmg. with the 10% increased healing and 20% dmg.
reduction which lasts for 60 seconds !

Stat change.

Since we no longer gain a larger mana pool from
Intellect we rely on spirit to gain the required regn. to sustain our raid, and
so an assumption must be that spirit is something that we must stack beyond
everything since we need to dish out more spells. Yes, spirit is a good stat,
but hold your horses and let us take a quick peek at our spell usage. If we
take a look at my Feng HC kill the healing done is:
30% Healing Rain, 14% Chain Heal, 12% Healing Stream Totem, 12% Earth Living,
11% Healing Tide Totem, 7% Riptide, 7% Restorative Mists and Healing Wave,
Unleash Life, Earth Shield, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge amounts to
around 7%.

Now this is by no means a perfect log or kill, but
in reality the only "extra" heals I would be able to gain from a lot
more spirit would be more CHs since I cannot cast much more Healing Rains since
I already do it more or less on CD, and the same goes for HST, Earth Living is
something I am not in control of, or well the more spells I cast the higher
chance of EL proccing, but I would argue that it isn't really worth
overspamming for that.

So how good is spirit then ? Spirit is still good,
and is one of the strongest stats, but there is no point in sacrificing all
your throughput in order to gain more regn. unless you have just dinged.

For myself I am currently rolling with 9700
spirit, which might seem odd since I just said that spirit isn't that amazing,
but the majority comes from gear, and you still need the required regn. in
order to do the task you got in the raid, and that is keeping people alive.

When sockets your new gear take a look at the socket
bonus and ask yourself "Is it worth going for the socket bonus?"
because sometimes it is.

For haste you want to get 871 (441 goblin) in order
to get a tick more on Earth Living, and that is with Ancestral Swiftness which
is a flat 5% haste increase. Now, why wouldn't I want more haste? Because
outside the breakpoints the only thing haste contributes to is burning your
mana pool faster, and that is not even that effective since the majority of
your single target heals should be under the influence of Tidal Waves anyway,
so you are only really boosting your CHs cast time from 0,2 with stacking
haste.

So haste is out - Crit or mastery ?

I personally went for crit, and that is on the idea
that the more crits the more mana I gain from Resurgence, and I am able to push
ever so slight higher damage on damage intensive fights such as e.g. Gara'Jal
the Spiritbinder where damage is tight. Furthermore, since crit doesn't go up
or down in its usefulness compared on ppls. HP it will, or that is my claim, be
of more use if you play as a team player since your throughput will be more
steady, and higher for the majority of the fight which I think means that your
fellow healers have to spend less mana because you heal more, and thereby reach
the "hard" last 20-30% of a boss with more mana, which should be
better than your mastery becoming amazing when everyone is oom and dying.

And shamans are great atm., forget the throughput of
the monks they are in my opinion not that good since they lack throughput CDs,
big heals and only can do Uplift spam on the raid, and while they look good on
the meter they rely on everyone else does the jobs of e.g. keeping tanks alive,
they are a bit like restoration druids in the start of Cata - Great throughput,
but worthless since they didn't bring anything else to the table. For those
disc priests out there who think that they are garbage since they aren't
pulling 60-70k HPs you are wrong,disc
is great more than great amazing since with Atonement you dish out 15-20k DPs,
shielding tanks for large hits, and is capable of pre-shielding the raid with
Spirit Shell (Which is AMAZING). Absorbs is always better than pure throughput.